Tag: tapout

According to a wild claim from sports gossip blog TerezOwens, TapouT is preparing to announce a deal with the WWE, in which the lifestyle brand will serve as the exclusive sponsor for the WWE’s talent roster, similar to Reebok’s uniform deal with the UFC.

At this point, the only official comment from FrontRowBrian is “stock will plunge.” We’re not sure if he’s referring to the WWE’s stock or TapouT’s stock. Probably both. We’ll keep you posted as soon as this rumor is confirmed/debunked.

Tapout is one of the most prominent apparel brands in MMA, worn mainly by the sport’s in-crowd consisting of loyal, uber-cool and educated fans, many of whom who have either trained or competed in martial arts themselves.

In 2012, news broke of a major scandal involving the Tapout brand and Hitman Gear founder Dan Diaz. Diaz had sold Hitman to Tapout in 2007 in exchange for 1.25 million shares in the new company, a five-year employment contract and the promise of radical expansion of the Hitman brand.

What Diaz ended up getting was a raw deal, with Hitman being sold for zero dollars when Tapout was sold to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) in September 2010, thus making his shares worthless. His employment contract was also terminated with the sale to ABG, leaving him high and dry.

Rather than settling for chump change, Diaz opted to take his case to the courts. He’s not just suing for damages—Diaz wants the moral victory of exposing the corruption that robbed him of the personal pride he put into his company.

The trial between Dan Diaz and Tapout/Authentic Brands Group has been set for July 7 of this year. Beyond the damages Diaz is seeking, there are allegations that many MMA fighters who licensed their names for Tapout signature shirts like Chuck Liddell, Kenny Florian and Keith Jardine, have been defrauded of royalties.

MMA fighters aren’t exactly known for their fashion sense. So it should come as little surprise that most MMA t-shirt companies produce some pretty questionable designs. The rampant abuse of foil print, skulls, chains, tribal designs and nautical stars among most MMA t-shirts is bad enough on its own; even worse when you consider that they sell for thirty bucks a pop.

Which I guess makes it all the worse when a fighter makes his way to the cage covered in an “athletic fit” Old-English mess. Not only is the shirt revolting, but it’s going to sell for an outlandish sum of money, and be worn by every overweight Texas Roadhouse chef, milquetoast tech support geek and muscle-bound frat boy.

Perhaps the reason that we’ve never attempted an “Ugliest Walkout Shirts” post is because ranking these train wrecks is like ranking, well, actual train wrecks. No matter what order you place them in, you’re a total scumbag for attempting to rank a tragedy from most to least depressing. And besides, you’re clearly wrong about which one belongs at number three. For that reason, these will not be ranked, per se, but rather categorized. How you feel these shirts fall into place is up to you.

Being an MMA fan ain’t easy sometimes. Hyped-up fights turn out to be snorefests, scandals damage the sport’s legitimacy, incredible parlay bets get wrecked by incompetent judging, forcing us to explain to our kids once again that Santa Claus most have lost our address this year. On today’s CagePotato Roundtable, we’re discussing the fights and moments that made us want to give up on MMA entirely and follow [*shudder*] baseball for a while. Let us know your own lowest fan-moment in the comments section, and if you have a topic for a future Roundtable column, send it it to tips@cagepotato.com.

It’s crazy how life goes full circle: When I was ten years old, Doug Flutie was my favorite NFL player. I begged my dad to buy me Flutie Flakes for breakfast, so that I too could grow up and be a successful, albeit undersized quarterback for a small market football team. My dad refused, which explains why I’m now a writer (You’re welcome, Andrew Luck). After all, I was too young to remember the real Doug Flutie, the Heisman Trophy winning Boston College quarterback who helped make the USFL somewhat relevant. Flutie may have still been a talented quarterback — especially for his age — but he had clearly lost a step by the time I started watching football.

Thirteen years later I was on the phone with my dad, talking about one of the most lopsided fights he had ever seen. I spent the entire conversation trying to convince him that the small, pudgy guy he just watched get destroyed by a no-name oddity was at one point the most dangerous fighter on the planet. As you may have guessed, I’m specifically referring to Fedor Emelianenko vs. Antonio Silva. But really, Fedor’s entire Strikeforce run can be summed up the exact same way. Perhaps Fedor was too old, perhaps the heavyweight division had simply caught up to him, or perhaps it was a combination of the two. But one thing is clear: By the time that Fedor made his way to Strikeforce, he was no longer the untouchable fighter that he had once been.

Even in his lone victory, a second round knockout against Brett Rogers, he was arguably losing the fight before connecting with the fight ending right hand. And Brett Rogers is no Apollo Creed; he’s barely a pimple on the ass of Vodka Drunkenski. He’s a gatekeeper in every sense of the word — just legitimate enough for EliteXC to have kept him away from a “prime” Kimbo Slice, but not legitimate enough to pose any threat of beating a true contender. We had all the warning signs that Fedor was going to be a bust signing after this fight, yet we chose to ignore them because hey, he won, right?

All I can think about is Mask rolling over in his grave right now. First the “bro deals” went out the window and now this. I understand the business logic behind the decision. However, I feel it’s a missed opportunity for the most recognizable MMA apparel company to have a positive impact in the lives of others while gaining the hearts of media everywhere. What do you guys think?

(Call us crazy, but we have a hunch two grown men who call themselves “Punkass” and “SkySkrape” may not always weigh the legal consequences of their actions. Pic: CombatLifestyle)

Here come the admissions (and the counter-arguments) in one of the weirdest MMA-related stories we’ve ever heard: The co-founders of MMA’s best known apparel company confirmed through their lawyer on Thursday that they handed out their deceased business partner’s ashes at a memorial service following his 2009 death, but said the amounts were far less than originally reported and that there was “nothing wrong with dividing up a loved one’s ashes” among his close friends. These acknowledgements from Tapout front men Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and Tim “SkySkrape” Katz came after the sister of Charles “Mask” Lewis filed a lawsuit in California this week seeking unspecified damages for the “overwhelming and severe emotional distress” caused by the treatment of her brother’s remains.

Caldwell and Katz fired back that Lewis and his sister were estranged at the time of his death and dismiss her lawsuit as a cash grab. Damn. We’re beginning to think this is one of those situations where everyone is right … and wrong, at the same time. Public responses from both Punkass and ’Skrape are after the jump.

You know you’re dealing with a messed up situation when even the hardened gossip mavens at TMZ deploy the phrase, “Here’s where things get CRAZY.” Frankly, we’re not even sure how to adequately put this into words, but here goes: The sister of deceased Tapout founder Charles “Mask” Lewis has filed a lawsuit in California accusing his partners in the MMA apparel company of stealing and illegally distributing her brother’s ashes as party favors during his 2009 memorial service. She further charges that the partners – Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and Tim “SkySkrape” Katz – still have the urn containing Lewis’ ashes and refuse to give it back, according to the report from TMZ.

Of all the Mask tributes floating around the Internet today, we have to give it up to Jonathan Snowden’s BloodyElbow interview with Lewis’s former TapouT business partners, Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and Timothy “SkySkrape” Katz.” Some highlights are after the jump.

The 53-year-old two-time drunk driver accused of causing the death of TapouT co-founder Charles "Mask" David Lewis Jr. was found guilty by a jury yesterday of one felony count of vehicular manslaughter by unlawful act with gross negligence while intoxicated and a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury.